Project Description

COLLECTIVE J&B

OVER

J&B collective established in 2015

Main members: Jacob and Bert Frings

‘Instead of cheap booze, J&B dishes up some disturbing political issues.Stickers, protest slogans and melted refuse bags, rendered painterly through folds and shades of color, bring social unrest to the art space.What exactly are the refugees running away from? Is only a consumer-immigrant a good immigrant? To spot the dead fly in the soup is one of the artist’s most honorable roles.’ Swiss curator Annina Zimmermann

Is there beauty in decay, even in moral decay? Vanitas artists from theDutch golden age showed still lifes with lemons, flies and skulls. Theyhad their reservations about the hubris and the inevitable decline of their decadent society. The Rotterdam based J&B collective hijacks theVanitas tradition and lets Western society comment on itself.

J&B uses the vocabulary of the street. Colored bin bags are applieddirectly to the wall in compositions reminding of color field paintingand minimal art, with radical recent protest signs fading in. In combinationwith weathered drawings, glass flies, street soundscapes, lifelike figures and unique stickers, they form thought-provoking installations.As in a broken mirror, we see the complex zeitgeist and our own, contradictory, human nature.